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>I work in a software development environment, and my department is
>establishing ways to collect metrics for our 2-person documenation
>group. We want to establish the goals now (called Key Results
>Expected), and use them to dermine if we made our goals at the end of
>the year (called Acutal Results Achieved). I guess meeting deadlines
>isn't quite enough ;)! Nor are the customer satisfaction surveys
>(which don't apply in the KRE/ARA methodology).
Don't kid yourself -- this stuff is mindless bureaucracy at its
worst, and has no redeeming value of any kind. Its intent is
to allow management to seize on a few easy-to-measure statistics
as the sole measures of quality, thus allowing them to abandon
the meaningful part of their own job and just follow a couple
of numbers around. As a side effect, it turns all of the
employees into clerks, measuring these numbers.
I suggest you come up with metrics that are cynical and self-serving.
Depending on the organization, you may or may not have to whitewash
your intent.
For example, adopt a kB of file size per man-day metric, and add
a few more graphics. You can show any desired amount of "improvement"
with a small increase in the number of screen shots, for example.
And you can always use an uncompressed format or switch to 24 bits
per pixel in an emergency.
I've seen this problem come and go. In general, dumb managers don't
have the stamina to be adequate clerks themselves, and so the
management-by-statistics fad runs its course very quickly.
-- Robert
--
Robert Plamondon, High-Tech Technical Writing, Inc.
36475 Norton Creek Road * Blodgett * Oregon * 97326
robert -at- plamondon -dot- com * (541) 453-5841 * Fax: (541) 453-4139 http://www.pioneer.net/~robertp
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